Trump ousts Secretary of State Tillerson, taps CIA director Pompeo

Washington: US President Donald Trump has ousted Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and replaced him with CIA Director Mike Pompeo, orchestrating a major change to his national security team amid delicate negotiations with North Korea, White House officials said Tuesday.

Trump last Friday asked Tillerson to step aside, and the embattled top diplomat cut short his trip to Africa on Monday to return to Washington.

Ousted: Former US secretary of state Rex Tillerson.
Photo: AP

Pompeo will replace him at the State Department, and Gina Hapsel - the deputy director at the CIA - will succeed him at the CIA, becoming the first woman to run the spy agency, if confirmed.

The President - who has long clashed with Tillerson, who he believes is "too establishment" in his thinking - felt it was important to make the change now, as he prepares for talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, as well as upcoming trade negotiations, three White House officials said.

Tillerson has been out of favour with Trump for months, but had resisted efforts to push him out and vowed to remain on the job. But his distance from Trump's inner circle was clear last week when the President accepted an invitation to meet with Kim, to the surprise of Tillerson.

In a statement issued to The Washington Post, Trump praised both Pompeo and Haspel.

"I am proud to nominate the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Mike Pompeo, to be our new Secretary of State," Trump said. "Mike graduated first in his class at West Point, served with distinction in the US Army, and graduated with honours from Harvard Law School. He went on to serve in the US House of Representatives with a proven record of working across the aisle."

The President continued, "Gina Haspel, the Deputy Director of the CIA, will be nominated to replace Director Pompeo and she will be the CIA's first-ever female director, a historic milestone. Mike and Gina have worked together for more than a year, and have developed a great mutual respect."

Trump also had words of praise for Tillerson: "Finally, I want to thank Rex Tillerson for his service. A great deal has been accomplished over the last fourteen months, and I wish him and his family well."

"I am deeply grateful to President Trump for permitting me to serve as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and for this opportunity to serve as Secretary of State," Pompeo said in a statement.

"His leadership has made America safer and I look forward to representing him and the American people to the rest of the world to further America's prosperity. Serving alongside the great men and women of the CIA, the most dedicated and talented public servants I have encountered, has been one of the great honours of my life."

Haspel in a statement also said she was excited for her promotion.

"After 30 years as an officer of the Central Intelligence Agency, it has been my honour to serve as its Deputy Director alongside Mike Pompeo for the past year," she said. "I am grateful to President Trump for the opportunity, and humbled by his confidence in me, to be nominated to be the next Director of the Central Intelligence Agency."

Five facts about Mike Pompeo

Mike Pompeo will replace Rex Tillerson as US Secretary of State.
Photo: Bloomberg

Pompeo, 54, regularly briefs Trump on intelligence matters, and is considered one of the most hawkish voices on North Korea in Trump's inner circle.
Pompeo has downplayed the extent of Russia's intervention in the 2016 US presidential election, saying Moscow has sought to influence American elections for decades. In February, he defended talks he had that month at CIA headquarters with Russian spy chiefs.
Like Trump, Pompeo is an outspoken critic of Iran and has called for scrapping the 2015 deal curbing Tehran's nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. In October, he said Iran was "mounting a ruthless drive to be the hegemonic power in the region."
Pompeo has supported the US government's sweeping collection of Americans' communications data. In an opinion piece published in 2016, he called for restarting the bulk collection of domestic telephone metadata and combining it with financial and lifestyle information into one searchable database.
Before taking the reins at the CIA in January, Pompeo was a conservative Republican member of the US House of Representatives from Kansas. He is a retired Army officer and a graduate of the US Military Academy at West Point, New York, and Harvard Law School.

Washington Post, with Reuters and New York Times